Icelanders will vote in a knife-edge referendum on Aug 29 on whether to restart negotiations to join the EU<\/a>, reopening a debate that has divided the country for decades.<\/p>\n Sigurdur Th\u00f3rdarson is fiercely opposed to realigning with Brussels – Sigga Ella<\/p>\n The vote is not on EU membership itself. If Icelanders vote yes, accession talks would restart, with any eventual deal requiring a second referendum.<\/p>\n The country is already deeply integrated with Europe. It belongs to the European Economic Area, which gives it access to the single market, as well as the European Free Trade Association and Schengen area.<\/p>\n “I don’t see the gain of becoming a full member for a small nation like ours,” Gudr\u00fan Hafsteinsd\u00f3ttir, the leader of Iceland’s centre-right Independence opposition party, told The Telegraph.<\/p>\n A Royal Navy frigate crashing into the Icelandic gunboat Thor in 1976 during the ‘Cod Wars’ – PA<\/p>\n “The question is not about whether Iceland should cooperate with Europe or not, because we do that every day. The question is rather: Should we transfer key decision-making from Iceland to Brussels.”<\/p>\n The latest Gallup poll put both sides at 46 per cent, with 8 per cent undecided.<\/p>\n Driving through the remote island, it is clear there is a split. “Nei vid ESB” \u2013 “no to the EU” \u2013 has been daubed across the side of a barn.<\/p>\n Iceland has been here before. It applied to join the EU in 2009, in the aftermath of the global financial crash.<\/p>\n The country spent four years at the negotiating table before talks were put on hold by a Eurosceptic government.<\/p>\n The question reemerged under Kristr\u00fan Frostad\u00f3ttir, the Social Democrat prime minister who came to power after elections in November 2024.<\/p>\n Her three-party coalition \u2013 with the pro-European Liberal Reform Party and the People’s Party \u2013 agreed to hold a referendum on whether to resume accession talks before 2027.<\/p>\n A campaign advert that reads ‘Iceland for sale? No thanks’ in Reykjavik – Jonathan Nackstrand<\/p>\n But the timetable was brought forward against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s threat to take control of Greenland<\/a>. The US president is said to sometimes conflate Iceland and Greenland.<\/p>\n As a non-EU member, Iceland remains outside the bloc’s Common Fisheries Policy. Joining could mean opening Icelandic waters for foreign fleets and dismantling Iceland’s fishing quotas.<\/p>\n Fishing has long been a symbol of Icelandic sovereignty, and for Mr Th\u00f3rdarson, it brings back memories of the Cod Wars.<\/p>\n Iceland and Britain were locked in a dispute over fishing rights in the North Atlantic between the 1950s and 1970s.<\/p>\n The row culminated in Iceland extending its exclusive fishing zone to 200 nautical miles.<\/p>\n “Icelandic sovereignty is the key theme in everything in Iceland when it comes to the EU. It’s not really about the fish,” said Hj\u00f6rtur J Gudmundsson, an expert in Icelandic-EU relations.<\/p>\n “The fish is more like a symbol of our sovereignty because of the cod wars with the British, and because it’s so important for us economically.”<\/p>\n Mr Th\u00f3rdarson fears EU membership would hollow out the fishing communities dotting Iceland’s coastline.<\/p>\n “I have seen how it is going in the former fishing areas which have been regulated by the European Union<\/a>. Some of these are almost like ghost towns today. It is terrible to see, and I wouldn’t want Iceland to become like that.”<\/p>\n He worries that fishermen would simply quit. “Fewer fishermen, but more regulators,” he tells The Telegraph.<\/p>\n Haraldur \u00d3lafsson, the leader of the No campaign, makes a similar argument. Far from the Nigel Farage of Iceland, Mr \u00d3lafsson is a mild-mannered professor of meteorology in a flat cap.<\/p>\n He predicts Icelandic fishing fleets could eventually be bought by foreign companies and argues that EU membership would amount to surrendering the country’s ability to govern itself.<\/p>\n While membership may benefit large-scale fishing companies, he says, it will come at the expense of Icelandic fishermen.<\/p>\n Thorgerdur Katr\u00edn Gunnarsd\u00f3ttir, the country’s foreign minister, is adamant that Iceland will retain “sovereign control over all fisheries” in any deal with the EU.<\/p>\n But her opponents find this hard to believe. “That is definitely not going to happen,” said Mr Gudmundsson.<\/p>\n “The EU couldn’t give us something that was not on the table for other EU members.”<\/p>\n A view across central Reykjavik, Iceland’s capital – Sigga Ella<\/p>\n Kristj\u00e1n Loftsson, Iceland’s last whaler, is equally opposed to EU membership.<\/p>\n Mr Loftsson started working on his father’s whaling ships when he was 13. Now he is known as Captain Ahab by his detractors, after the obsessed whaling captain in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick<\/a>.<\/p>\n The label does not seem to bother him.<\/p>\n “I’m immune. They are trying everything, this anti-everything movement.”<\/p>\n He has frequently been the target of environmental activists, whom he calls “international terrorists” for protesting against his profession. In 1986, two of his whaling vessels were sunk by activists from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.<\/p>\n Mr Loftsson, who has donated to the No campaign, is firmly against joining the bloc because of the EU’s ban on the trade of whale products<\/a>. He calls Brussels a “socialistic, communistic setup” obsessed with regulation.<\/p>\n However, as the popularity of whale products declines, so do his profits. The solution, Mr Loftsson says, is in whale-meat-based iron tablets.<\/p>\n Kristj\u00e1n Loftsson, a whaler, is keen to avoid the Brussels ban on trading whale products – Sigga Ella<\/p>\n Whale meat is high in iron, containing around 300mg per kg of dry weight compared with 40mg in beef, and Mr Loftsson sees this as a profitable untapped market.<\/p>\n Ms Hafsteinsd\u00f3ttir, the opposition leader, is a supporter of whaling. “It’s legal. As long as it is legal, then I support it. I support freedom to work.”<\/p>\n Before entering politics, Ms Hafsteinsd\u00f3ttir, an heiress to the Icelandic ice cream company Kj\u00f6r\u00eds, was a businesswoman.<\/p>\n She is concerned about the impact<\/a> joining the bloc could have on Icelandic businesses.<\/p>\n “They have put so much focus on the EU that they have, from my point of view, forgotten the Icelandic economy because they are waiting for Europe to solve it for them, and that will never happen.”<\/p>\n The Icelandic kr\u00f3na is one of the world’s smallest independent currencies, and its volatility has long been a problem for the country.<\/p>\n Interest rates are high and inflation remains elevated. Supporters of EU membership argue that adopting the euro would provide greater economic stability.<\/p>\n Kristrun Mjoll Frostadottir with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission – Simon Wohlgahrt<\/p>\n “It is an illusion,” says Ms Hafsteinsd\u00f3ttir. “Joining the EU or changing the currency here will not fix the problems we are facing.”<\/p>\n There are also concerns about the union’s lack of growth. “The EU is lacking and dragging,” says Gudlaugur Th\u00f3r Th\u00f3rdarson, a former foreign minister and prominent opponent of EU membership.<\/p>\n “You know they’re lagging behind. There’s no one picking up the EU model.”<\/p>\n![\"Sigurdur](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/the_telegraph_258\/755ef51110c51efd65b67d53f5a3f96b.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/the_telegraph_258\/fd1a1f681cd2fa35f0ea00306505fb47.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/the_telegraph_258\/872a3d27ec5d5f63b13975c404e2dccf.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/the_telegraph_258\/86b2c9b6ad17a096361f74ca3db07885.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Kristj\u00e1n](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/the_telegraph_258\/62ad63f88487bbfdd0ec67fdc5c828f3.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Kristrun](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/the_telegraph_258\/c553a2470ec8ac8daf93a6d7a1efa7c6.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
![\"Gudr\u00fan](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/the_telegraph_258\/1406750b6e92df2b2228aab7fa1b5f97.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Reykjavik,](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/the_telegraph_258\/aeafddf6b7f83b88c89d92d879028027.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n